A Book of American Martyrs(67)

Our mother leaves the house. We see her walking unsteadily in the driveway and wonder what the police officers are thinking.

We’d overheard our father remark to our mother, months ago when he’d still been working at the Port Huron Center—The police resent us. That’s pretty obvious.

Through the daytime hours there were two officers assigned to guard the Center. There were volunteers (both male and female) who helped with security and with escorting women and girls into the building past the gauntlet of protesters. Even so, the facade of the Port Huron Center had been defaced by graffiti several times and many mornings there was evidence of vandalism—overturned trash cans, garbage scattered across the property.

“Mom?—Mom, wait!”—it’s Naomi who has run after Jenna, waving frantically as the vehicle backs out of the driveway; but the driver knows better than to stop. All Naomi can see of our mother is that she has hidden her face in her hands.

She is a coward. We hate her!


LATER WE WILL LEARN, there were death threats made to the family of Gus Voorhees on this day and for days following.

These were calls received by several women’s centers with which our father had been associated as well as by abortion providers in Michigan and Ohio who’d had no contact with our father.

Message to the wife of baby killer Voorhees how’d you like your kids murdered? Eye for an eye?

So much time has passed yet it is only eleven o’clock in the morning! Naomi stares at the clock face, the hand seems to have frozen.

She is very tired. She has been crying, for her father is dead.

Still, no one has uttered the word dead.

If you are a child like Naomi who is a harsh critic of herself you are likely to be astonished when—at last—the world punishes you as you’d thought you deserved.

Because I am ugly and stupid and clumsy it is not fair to punish my father. Please don’t let that happen . . .

The shock of a family emergency is that the child learns it has nothing to do with her.

The phone rings, rings. In another room someone answers it.

Ellen Farlane is telling Naomi and Melissa that they must be brave, this is a terrible thing.

But they are safe. They will be safe.

Nothing will happen to them.

Friends of Jenna’s have arrived. There is much hugging, there are tears. Naomi runs to hide in the upstairs bathroom.

The plan is, we might stay with these friends until our mother returns from Ohio or until we are summoned to Ohio. Darren is beginning to say no, Darren is beginning to balk, but Naomi and Melissa are not strong enough to say no.

The phone rings. We determine that it isn’t our father who is calling. We slip away to hide.

There is a place in the cellar we can hide, except we are afraid of the cellar. The bad smell in the cellar. The smelly bad things Mom found in the cellar, so nasty they could not be named.

The plan is, someone is coming soon to drive the three of us to Ann Arbor within the hour and there we will stay with the McMahans, which is upsetting to us for we have never visited with the McMahans without our parents. Naomi begins to feel anxious, for what will she talk about with these people? She doesn’t really like Mr. McMahan so much, he is a lawyer who is always disputing her father, contradicting Gus and questioning his “data” though of course Mr. McMahan and Gus are old, close friends and respect each other. (The men have told the tale many times of how they’d both “pledged” Sigma Nu as freshmen at U-M—then, soon afterward, when the nature of fraternity life was revealed to them, as well as the monthly amount in dues and fees they’d have to pay, both men had “depledged.” The point of the story is, the children surmise—Who would believe it? Gus Voorhees, Lenny McMahan—Sigma Nu fraternity?) Still, Naomi has noticed how Mr. McMahan rarely nods in agreement when Gus speaks, as others do, as if he knows more of Gus Voorhees than the others, and isn’t so easily won over.


HE’S DEAD. They killed him.

Who—? Who killed him?

The ones who’d said they would. Shot him down this morning.

Darren speaks flatly, bitterly. Of course, it is true. All this while we have known.

Except, Melissa has not known. It will be a long time before Melissa ceases to ask—Where is Daddy? When is Daddy coming home?

Why can’t we go live with Daddy?

There will be a funeral for Gus Voorhees, but not in Ohio. The funeral will be in Ann Arbor where we will all be staying.

Not today, not tomorrow.

But when is today, and when is tomorrow?

Darren speaks flatly, bitterly. Darren has said he will never forgive our mother.

Why?—Naomi asks; and Darren says because our mother didn’t want to move to Ohio to be with our father, if we’d all been living there this would not have happened.

But how do you know that? How can you say that?—Naomi asks, astonished; and Darren says Just go to hell. You don’t know shit.

Soon after, Naomi hears a furious braying sound outside, in the old hay barn—her brother playing his trumpet like a summoning of the dead.


BY THE TIME Leonard McMahan arrives at the house at Salt Hill Road the sky has darkened. Our mother has not yet called home and Ellen Farlane has heated chicken noodle soup for us and has helped us pack our things—pajamas, toothbrushes, socks and underwear, clothing and school things.

“I hope we never come back to this fucking place.”